


The Fragile

by SharpestRose



Category: Never Let Me Go (2010), The Social Network (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-29
Updated: 2011-06-29
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mark likes to make things. Eduardo likes to help him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fragile

**Author's Note:**

> A The Social Network / Never Let Me Go crossover.  
> Warnings for adolescent sexuality of a similar level to that in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel.  
> This is all Kati and Grace's fault.

When they are eight, everyone is long accustomed to the fact that the two of them are always together. Today they are hard at work in the corner of the art room.

Eduardo has a huge sheet of graph paper spread before him and he is charting points and lines according to the pattern he's designed.

It's a fractal, identical no matter how large or small it becomes. It will look like a graceful, sweeping fern when he's finished.

Mark has made a code as well, a far more complicated one with three dimensions. He's building it out of matchsticks from the art supply cupboard, gluing them together in a sprawling, intricate network of connections.

It's beautiful. It makes Eduardo think of snowflakes.

\--

When they are nine a different visitor comes, not Madame with the usual gossip about Galleries running through the student body.

This visitor is a man and his name is Mr Parker, and Mark is called in to speak to him. Mark looks thoughtful after Mr Parker leaves, but doesn't tell Eduardo what they talked about, or why.

\--

When they are eleven Eduardo has four artworks selected for the Gallery in one round. Mark doesn't have any on this particular occasion, though both of them often have inclusions. Eduardo hasn't had one for almost a year, though, so he's happy.

"They probably felt sorry for you," Mark says distractedly as he works. Mark likes to make things. Sometimes Eduardo thinks that maybe it's the only thing Mark likes. "Because it's been almost a year."

Lots of students don't have anything in the Gallery for much longer than a year at a time. "You're... you're probably right," Eduardo agrees.

He hands Mark another matchstick. Mark is making another design. This one is large and detailed and sturdy. It still looks like a snowflake. It's the most perfect thing Eduardo has seen.

It will be chosen for the Gallery for certain. Eduardo likes the thought of his artworks and Mark's artworks, kept on display together, somewhere far away.

\--

When they are fourteen and learning about sex and students are starting to do it, the word for homosexual attraction in the student slang is _umbrella_. It's something oddly illicit, something to giggle and gossip over.

Chris H. and Dustin M. are getting all umbrella with one another, Christy L. tells Alice C. one day when Eduardo is in earshot. It sounds strange and dirty and _awful_ , in a way Eduardo doesn't know how to say.

Like none of the other things Chris H. and Dustin M. are, or are to one another, matter as much as _that_.

Eduardo and Christy and Alice talk about other things for a while, but he knows they're all really still talking about sex. Sex is new and exciting, so it's all anybody really talks about even if they're pretending to be talking about other things instead.

Eduardo and Christy and Alice and Mark all end up in one of the dormitories together a bit later in the afternoon. Christy puts her mouth on Eduardo's penis. He wonders what Alice and Mark are doing on the next bed over but he doesn't dare look. He closes his eyes and listens to the sounds instead.

\--

When they are sixteen and have left Hailsham and live at the Cottages, Eduardo has started thinking about something.

"I'm going to start training as a carer," he tells Mark one day, when they're out walking in the countryside near the buildings where they live. Eduardo makes Mark go for walks, because Mark doesn't remember to otherwise. Mark gets caught up in the ideas inside his head, writing down plans and blueprints for buildings and labyrinths. He forgets to sleep sometimes, too.

Eduardo's decided to tell Mark about his plans, and nobody else. Because he likes to share the things that happen in his life with Mark, and because other people would look at the way he makes sure that Mark goes for walks and eats and sleeps, and they'd say " _you're practically already a carer right now, he just hasn't donated yet_ ".

And Eduardo doesn't want to hear those words. Doesn't want to think about Mark donating, no matter how inevitable and unavoidable it is. And he's afraid that maybe other people would look at them, look at the way he looks after Mark, and they'll say _umbrella_ under their breath to one another and Mark will overhear and everything will be awful.

"Then you'll learn how to drive. That could be very useful if we wanted to see places further away than the ones we can reach on these walks," Mark observes. "I'm sure you're as bored as I am with looking at the same sights constantly."

Eduardo gives Mark a long glance, smiles a little, and shakes his head. "No, not really."

\--

And when they're sixteen something else happens too. Two something elses, really, but they're connected. At least, they always feel connected to Eduardo, afterwards.

The first is that Stuart S., who lives at the Cottages along with them but who didn't grow up at Hailsham, mentions the rumour. Eduardo and Mark have never heard it before, because it isn't said at Hailsham, but apparently everybody else has heard it.

The rumour is this: if two people are in love, really in love, they can delay their donations for a little while. Just a few years.

Stuart wants to know if they know who to contact. What they have to do to prove it.

Eduardo can see that it's important to Stuart, so he doesn't laugh at the idea. He hopes Mark will follow his lead, for once, and not laugh either.

"I haven't heard anything about that, sorry," he says.

Mark doesn't say anything. He's frowning. Stuart looks at Eduardo, and then at Mark.

"You do know, don't you? You do and you just won't say," Stuart says angrily, and walks away from them, his feet stomping down on the snow.

The second thing is related to the first thing because the second thing is that Eduardo and Mark, when they're back inside, are both still thinking about what Stuart said while they were outside.

"It's absurd. I mean, it must have been clear to him even as he was speaking that it was absurd," Mark is saying. He sounds frustrated and unhappy, but Eduardo isn't sure why that would be. "The social matrices around sexual relationships are completely different in our groups to in the general population. Without a prospect of long-term cohabitation or of procreation, the idea of 'love' is redu-"

Mark stops talking then because Eduardo has kissed him. Unlike Mark, Eduardo believes in love. He believes in fondness, and caring, and in aching, almost painful wanting.

He wonders if someday, after he completes and his heart is in a different ribcage, if that sweet, perfect almost-pain will still exist inside it.

He knows that if he said as much to Mark, Mark would impatiently explain to him that the heart as the seat for romantic emotion is nothing but a trite and overused metaphor. But Eduardo has heard stories, stories about people taking on personality aspects of the donors who had the organs before them. He likes that idea. He likes the idea that the love he feels for Mark might live on.

Maybe they're just stories, as impossible and stupid as the rumours of reprieves. But maybe everyone needs something to believe in.

"Oh," Mark says, in the tiny space between their mouths after the kiss ends. They're both breathing very hard now. Even with the fire lit, it's quite cold inside the Cottages. They're in Mark's room. Mark never makes his bed, but Eduardo has made sure there are blankets on it. If he didn't make sure, Mark wouldn't notice and then he'd freeze.

"We should get under the blankets," Eduardo says. Mark nods. The movement brings his mouth against Eduardo's again, and they kiss and kiss and kiss. Eventually they get so cold that they remember to get under the blankets like they meant to.

Eduardo knows that some people say that orgasms are like fireworks, but to Eduardo they are like snowflakes.

\--

When they are seventeen one of the others at the Cottages, Erica A., says she's seen somebody who might be Eduardo's original.

The man is still in the cafe when Mark and Eduardo get there, cheeks flushed and hearts racing, but it's a false alarm. The man, Tommy, he went to Hailsham too. He's done one donation.

Eduardo's always assumed their surnames, their initials, were for what number they were: he was Eduardo S., so he was 19/26. Mark was Mark Z., so he was 26/26. Eduardo has always liked that. The idea that, after Mark, the makers had broken that mould.

But Tommy and Eduardo have the same original. So Eduardo doesn't know what it means anymore.

"At least I know what to expect, after I start donating," Eduardo says in the car on the way back to the Cottages, trying to hide his disappointment by joking as he drives.

"That's stupid," Mark snaps. "You've always known."

\--

When they're eighteen Eduardo tells Mark about his thoughts on hearts. Mark is, as predicted, somewhat scathing in reply. Eduardo ignores it, remaining in his comfortable position against Mark's chest, listening to the thump of Mark's heart below Eduardo's ear.

"You're as sentimental as I am, don't pretend otherwise," Eduardo says after a long time. He likes these moments, where they're tired and spent and happy together, in their little cocoon beneath the blankets. He doesn't believe in an afterlife -- such a notion isn't taught to children whose value is in how very _temporary_ they are -- but he thinks that Heaven would probably be a bit like this, if it existed.

"What would make you say that?" Mark asks, his fingers tracing idle patterns in Eduardo's hair. Idle, but not random. None of Mark's patterns are ever random. They are always perfect dances of choreographed logic and design.

"You don't call it having sex. You haven't since we began. You call it _making love_ ," Eduardo answers, sitting up now, so that he can capture Mark's mouth with his own.

"I like to make things," Mark answers, and looks as if he's planning new and towering structures behind his eyes.

\--

When they're nineteen, Eduardo has almost completed his carer training. Mark has gotten cleverer and cleverer. It's autumn and golden on their walks, and one day when they arrive back at the Cottages, Mr Parker is waiting for them.

"You must be aware that Mark is a remarkable young man," Mr Parker says to Eduardo in his smooth, charming voice when they are inside and sitting at the table in the kitchen, Eduardo and Mark on one side, Mr Parker on the other. Eduardo hates Mr Parker almost instantly. "We've had our eye on him for a long time."

"What for? What do you mean your 'eye'?" Eduardo asks. Mark hasn't said anything. He is looking at the two of them and Eduardo, who can understand Mark even at his most incomprehensible, has no idea what his expression means.

"I work for an organisation which monitors children in places such as Hailsham," Mr Parker tells Eduardo. "Looking for children like Mark. Children who are not simply gifted, but truly... remarkable."

"You already used that word," Eduardo says. "If you make a habit of watching geniuses, you should learn a broader vocabulary."

It's rude. He knows it's rude. It's the same kind of nasty remark he so often has to rescue Mark from having made. But Eduardo doesn't care, because his pulse is a stuttering roar in his ears and he's terrified.

"Dissection. That's what you're talking about, isn't it?" he snaps at Mr Parker. "You're talking about taking Mark's brain out to see what makes it special."

"Eventually, yes," Mr Parker replies, voice as chatty and pleasant as ever. "But not for some time yet. A mind like Mark's is an anomaly, one which defies the expected boundaries of his source material. He is, to put it simply, _brilliant._ He can be an architect, an engineer, a codebreaker. There are a thousand professions which can benefit from his brain remaining exactly where it is, for a few years yet."

"Head over heart. It stands to reason, in a culture capable of such an efficient method of prolonging lifespans," Mark mutters quietly to himself. He sounds rueful. Eduardo feels sick.

"You knew about this, didn't you?" His voice is almost a shout. "Since Hailsham, you've known. That you had the secret formula to get out of here, and it was yours alone. When we... you've always known."

"I knew it was a likely possibility," Mark concedes. Then, without missing a beat, he turns to Mr Parker. "I don't come unless Eduardo comes too."

Mr Parker's eyebrows shoot up. " _What?_ "

"I'm sure you heard me, as you are sitting well within hearing distance. I therefore assume your response is a rhetorical question, designed to intimidate me by expressing disbelief that I'd dare assume I had any bargaining power here. But I do have bargaining power, Mr Parker. My potential inventions and innovations are worth more to you than Eduardo's organs. The pair of us are, to put it bluntly, cheap and disposable medical byproducts. But my singular intelligence and capacity for creative thought is, as you so aptly described it, _remarkable._ " Mark gives Mr Parker a twitchy, momentary smile. "So you're going to take us both."

\--

When they are twenty, they live in a flat inside a high-rise building full of flats, in the middle of a giant city full of buildings full of flats. The flat they live in is heated and clean and new, but sometimes they like to sleep under old, soft blankets anyway, listening to the slow thump of their hearts. Their hearts are going to be theirs and theirs alone for a long time yet, shared with nobody but each other.

And then, when they get out of bed, Eduardo helps Mark work on his patterns. Ferns and cobwebs and loops as intricate as lace, designs of programs and infrastructures the likes of which nobody has ever had before. Eduardo's favourites are the ones that look that look like snowflakes. Mark teases him for being sentimental. Eduardo reminds him to eat.


End file.
